Seekers of Illumination

[Silver]

If you aren't remembered, do you exist?

I feel that if you exist, you exist. You may not be remembered very well depending on various things, but you will leave some sort of an impact on what will happen later in time. Even if it is just walking into a floating microbial killing it which in term might be responsible for that particular microbial not reproducing and mutating and affecting the health of others. You could live for a second or less and STILL have some kind of an effect on the rest of the world. Existence and your memory in others are related in some ways, but are relatively independent of each other.

Would you rather be remembered as some extraordinary guy? Or just be another average forgotten face?

I do not really care all that much in what capacity I am remembered. All I hope is that for some other people living here, my existence can bring them happiness, comfort or some other good feeling. I hope I can change some people's views on things for the better and feel if I can do that for even a couple of people, it's worth it. Still my thoughts here might be slightly biased as I am quite sure I will be remembered by a few people, since I do tend to stand out in several circumstances.

[Govinda]

I just noticed this, and read your very lovely first post, Suzu. I've never joined a club before (Eurotrash Online over there let me in based on geography) because I hadn't really seen the point. But I like your idea. Lots. I'm not that great when it comes to RP, but hey, I'll give anything a go. I'm literate.

So. In answer to the question posed in the first post, I'm an athiest. But I'm not an arrogant one. I live by the idea that anyone can believe what they like as long as it harms no other person, or they can choose to forsake the whole thing for want of evidence, ruled by so much logic and so little sense, as I am. Pascal can take a running jump, as I see it.

I research religions objectively, because you can't reject something without first having given it a fair hearing. I'm yet to be convinced, but my favourite so far is Hinduism, by a mile, because of the cows and the gods and the lovely art.

I don't believe in much, except David Bowie, tolerance, and human fallability.

Yours,
International Woman of Attempted Mystery

[Azuteor]

Oh! Hello Miss Govinda! Welcome to the Seekers of Illumination club! Thank you very much, but most of the credit goes to the members. Anywho, it is great to have someone like you joining in our home and I very much want to learn about your knowledge on Hinduism.

Alright! I will add you to the list, oh, and you're officially a member now!! Congratz. ^^;

[Govinda]

Thank you very much, dear Suzu . I'm glad to be here.

If I may be so bold, I'd like to comment on the current discussion. If you aren't remembered, you never existed...well. If you existed and your existence was acknowledged by others beside yourself, then you existed. And when you die, you cease to exist; it's over. Whether or not you're remembered is irrelevant, as I see it. Celtic's points were excellent too. If you're walking along the road and kick a bottle that's lying there that another person would have tripped over had you not moved it...and so on.

And I'd just like to be remembered. Whether I'm ordinary or extraodrinary will be something for someone else to decide; I'd just like to be remebered fondly.

[OmniTense]

This discussion seems reminiscent of an old "If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?" What a brashly Solipsistic discussion!

From the Taoist perspective, every single action, be it a spoken word or the slightest tacit, creates concentric echoes that effect everything around it to a varying degree. Create a big enough wave and the world will change the highwater mark, even if they do not remember your name.

All existence and all of it's processes are cyclical swirlings of Yin and Yang, like the mixing of clouds. In the midst of this cosmic intercourse, there are humans which are microcosmic organisms that are universes in themselves. To say that even the least and the briefest of them doesn't matter is to misunderstand the system. Each living thing is PART of this cyclical system.

To quote the old poem by John Donne: "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

To say that after a person dies and no one remembers you is bull. Even if people forget, the earth still remembers. So of course you still existed!


Now to your next question:

I would be remembered as I am and nothing more, be that great or modest.

[Govinda]

I have a question, if I may. It's a personal type one.

For those of you who believe in some mysticism, be it a God or some other supernatural force, what is it that allows you to believe? Without evidence, how can you gear your minds to facilitate faith?

I hope that isn't offensive. I don't mean it as 'there's no evidence so your God isn't there' type thing at all. I'm just curious, and seeking the answer. I can't hold faith in things I can't see, for some reason...so I'd like to know about the other side. Can't stay on one side without finding out all you can about the other. And, after all, we're all on some side...duality and 5 am and things...

[OmniTense]

First of all there is no one answer that will satisfy this monstrosity of a question that you have asked. Accounting for billions and billions of people's beliefs is not a task for a mere human being. But I will tell you why I believe, easily.


When you are young you are told by your parents that there is a God and all of that. To a child this doesn't mean all that much and it takes back seat to normal day-in and day-out thought processes and activities. It stays in there, but more or less occurred to me like my parents told me about Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny. So it gets filed away for future reference.

I was raised in a Catholic school so Catholic tradition was just another subject to me. I had a little work book that I coloured in and wrote notes and what not.

Then later as you grow up, you began to notice something. It's superstitious at first and plays with you and it's nothing you can put your finger on.

It began for me when I was only fourteen. I had a gloomy room back then too. I was on the bed reading the book of Ezekiel. And it gave a series of mathmatical figures. They are recorded as following:
(Note that the prophecy took place in 592 BC)

"Lie on your left side and put the sin of the house of Israel upon yourself. You are to bear their sin for the number of days you lie on your side. I have assigned you the same number of days as the years of their sin. So for 390 days you will bear the sin of the house of Israel. After you have finished this, lie down again, this time on your right side, and bear the sin of the house of Judah. I have assigned you 40 days, a day for each year." (Ezekiel 4:4-6).

Then in Leviticus it is stated

"If you will not listen to me and carry out all these commands, and if you reject my decrees and abhor my laws and fail to carry out all my commands and so violate my covenant...I will set my face against you so that you will be defeated by your enemies. If after all this you will not listen to me, I will punish you for your sins seven times over." (Leviticus 26: 14-22.)

After doing all the math and taking into account that the ancient Jewish callendar consisting of only 360 days. I came up with the date 1948 as the end of Jewish punishment.


Nothing coming close to proof, at least not in my mind. But it was a very...awkward coincidence. Further study, led me to study a little bit more. And then, overtime, trends and patterns began to evolve in what should have been a random path of chaos.

Then I began thinking on Chaos and the laws of Thermodynamics. The second law standing out in my mind. "That any given state left unto itself decays to a maximum state of entropy." "SQ/T is greater than or equal to 0" and all that messy Physical Chemistry.

It didn't hold that this long proven axiom of man would explain why this system which was supposedly birthed out of all things...random chaotic reactions that had no motivating factor. How could entropy have been slung so far off it's own dominating trend?



The first law: "Matter and Energy cannot be destroyed merely converted" "dU=SQ-SW" Means that all matter or energy in this world is constant. So all of this had to have come from somewhere and in essence established in my mind that something, had always been and would always be.


Then in my mind I recalled a mass of thread-like strands of scripture. God cursing the Arabs to always hold their fists against the nations of the world. Not to touch the oil and wine in the last days. This mass of non-decoded wordage that all abstractly pointed in the same direction.


I also took into account the thousands of generations before me and their beliefs meant at the very least SOMETHING imprinted in human genes made one tend towards believing in some form of dominant creative intelligence outside the realm of our still limited scope. And so part of the proof lies in you even having to ask this question.



















You see, in the end, it's not that God sit down and had a big discussion with me. I didn't hear his voice or have an exstatic vision. I saw his sillouette through the trends and patterns of crystalized and unaccounted for order in a universe largely reputed to have been created by random reactions.


I saw such things as the human body. A tremendously massively complicated system of organs that are fine-tuned to the exact specificity that makes them function perfectly down to the molecular level. And then tried to sell myself that it was the product of a random happenstance. I couldn't do that. And then it all spilled forth from that.


So you see it all starts with believing less and less that all of this around us just popped into being randomly.

[Silver]

That IS a very good question.
For me, I just know God exists. Normally I have a hard timing believing anything so "farfetched" *cough*, but God? Yeah I just feel him there. In the part of me which stops the rest of me from becoming uncontrollable. While he might not be the God any religion ever talks about, I do see him as a goodly force, if a little chaotic. I also see God in the deeds of others, in the beauty around me. Uncontrollable, undefineable, one of few things I could ever hope to fully comprehend regardless of happenings or circumstance. I believe you can face him and not know you are facing him. And I also believe he has no gender as he is of a higher existence. That said I find it a lot easier calling him "he" or "him" or whatever than "it" or other similar words.

I think for some its simply "you believe" or "you don't". And maybe that's just the way things are supposed to be. As for evidence of existence, just as his existence cannot be proved, neither can it be DISPROVED.

I think that's all I can really say on the matter.

[Govinda]

Thank you both very much for sharing your thoughts. It's becoming clearer.

OmniSin...the idea of having faith simply because no better an explanation for the universe can be found is one I have often toyed with. But it always comes back to the same thing: Darwin. As far as I'm concerned, this life, this Earth, these people and flowers are coicidences. A great number of highly intelligent people, including Sir David Attenborough, agree with you though. Perhaps one day I'll count myself in that number if ever I am able to stop my mind from doing what it does best, overanalysing every and any thing it is presented with.


I really like the way you see your God, Celtic. It's wonderful, poetic even. You just 'know'? Full certainty without evidence...this is where I start to wonder, haha.

And you're right, God can't be disproved (and frankly I dislike people who try. They're the most horrible kind of athiest; the kind that will moan about how bad the Christian faith is for its evangelical side and then try to shove the theory of evolution down the throat of the first Christian they meet. Let everyone practice what they like, so long as it hurts no other. I find these athiests abhorrent, ignorant, pushy and very arrogant).

It would just be nice if He/She/It/Them could be proven. But that would be too easy, wouldn't it...

[OmniTense]

Darwin was a priest.

And I don't believe in God because no other explanation exists. That is only how it started. I now have tons of esoteric reasons to believe the way I do. But they are, by now, too numerous and tiresome to count.


I have a test for you, Govinda. Offer up some proof to me that you really are who you say you are. I have no real evidence save what you have told me.

You see that what you are doing is not logic. Logic is a method of answering questions. What you are doing (If you forgive me for saying so) is employing skepticism. Which has it's own religion. (Ala "solipsism") And though Skepticism should have it's rightful place in everyone's mind, you can't let it eat at you until it disturbs your logical processes.

I began believing in God because I was trying to answer questions that others are not ready to answer. That is logic. Answering a question to the best of your ability with all available facts in hand. Not questioning others' answers, but merely finding your own.

And when one explanation has become the sole existing explanation for a question all too seldom challenged. Then and only then do you have your answer.


But I don't mean to preach. I may have come off as slightly aggressive and that was not my intention. I am very glad you are here, Gov. These are basic questions which the members of the SoI very rarely think on and I am grateful you have given us all a little something to reconsider.

[Kuradic]

The way I see it Pablo, is that people are told what they can believe in. It's the person's choice however to decide whether to believe or not. I often ask this question to myself. In all honesty, I don't think there is any solid evidence of any religion being true. The "evidence" I guess will simply be how strong or weak a person's faith is. Some people can simply take religion as a way of comfort, a way to avoid something else they don't want to believe in. Such as life having no meaning, or that death is the end of everything. To some when they die, they go to a better place, and I guess that reason is enough for a person to have faith or not. I also agree with silver, religion can't be disproved, because religion is only what you believe to be true. And with the whole evolution thing, as Pablo mentioned, I believe all that science is just a test of true faith. You can take either one of the paths.

[Govinda]

Aggressive? No! I love that you've given me such a challenge.

I'm a born skeptic. I won't deny that. But as I see it, my athiesm is logic; in trying to answer the question of 'Is there a God?' I have used the evidence of His/Her/Their/Its existence offered to me and drawn the only rational conclusion that I can see: no evidence, no existence. I answer my question with logic and rationality, if logic is the process of answering a question with all presented facts.

As for where we all came from, I again look to empirical evidence. I find no evidence of a Divine Being waving a very Divine Hand and crafting from that this perfect Earth. I see a book or ten that said they did. I see chimpanzees that have almost exactly the same DNA as we do. I see evidence of bacteria that lived in the sea, that came to land, and grew, expanded, became infinitely more complex in a perfect process, a wonderful accident.

Prove that I am who I say I am... I don't know how to answer that. I'll just take a quite trip into relative philosophy for the fun of it. I am, according to the empirical evidence presented to me, a homo sapiens female living on a fertile rock in the middle of an infinite expanse, the explanation of which is, at this point, beyond us. I came from a genetic combination of my mother and father. I am Heather McLellan, and I'm meaningless. I'm trying to make my own answers (because, frankly, I'm too arrogant to accept anyone else's without tearing it to bits beforehand with scathing scepticism and empirical logic). I'm looking for the perfect answer, the one that comes with evidence and explanation, the one that probably doesn't exist.

I could easily be one of God's creatures. But if I can't see, touch, smell, or hear that God then I don't see how it can be there. Pascal's Gambit, right? Better to be wrong about athiesm than religion. But I could never believe unless I could see evidence of God. It's just something that my mind cannot facilitate. I can't believe. Maybe it's a mental dysfunction, maybe it's the correct human state, who knows?

You could be right, or I could be right. I think the fact of the matter is, we won't know until we're dead. And if we get to visit one another in the afterlife I'll buy you a drink, because I'll have been wrong. If we sleep forever, then nothing more will come of it (I'll have to get you a drink beforehand, just to be on the safe side).

I hope I've answered your question, but I feel I haven't done so to the fullest I could have, partly because my brain isn't as big as yours. I relish challenge, and thank you, for making me think more than I normally would at this time.